The subject invention is directed to a coping saw and more particularly to a coping saw having an improved handle that permits the coping saw to be easily operated in a first orientation for making a first cut and in a second orientation for making a coping second cut.
Traditionally, when a room is finished within a building, molding is often applied around the room adjacent the juncture between the ceiling and the walls and/or adjacent the juncture between the floor and the walls. The molding adjacent the ceiling is generally referred to as crown molding, while the molding adjacent the floor is generally referred to as baseboard molding. Molding is installed along a wall, and the different pieces of molding meet in the corners of the room to provide a seemingly endless border around the ceiling and floor of the room.
For aesthetic purposes it is desirable that the pieces of molding meet at each corner juncture without a seam so as to provide a seemingly continuous, unbroken boundary of molding. Making two pieces of molding match up without a seam is difficult because in most instances, molding has an ornate exposed surface which includes a variety of projections, curves and indentations. One proposed way of eliminating the seam is to miter or cut the molding pieces at a particular angle which will allow two pieces to meet at a corner juncture and form a continuous structure. For example, a corner piece of molding will be mitered at 45 degrees for a 90 degree room corner. However, it is very difficult to miter the molding so that there is an exact fit, and if the mitering is not exactly precise, a seam or crack appears and ruins the continuous look of the finished molding. Seamless mitering is even more difficult when the molding is tilted forward away from the wall, as crown molding often is.
Currently, the most popular technique for affixing separate pieces of molding together in the corner juncture of a room to provide an apparent and continuous and seamless structure is coping. Coping involves making a precise cut along one end of a piece of molding so that the cut end follows the unique projections, curves and indentations of the adjacent piece of corner molding. Proper coping of a piece of molding produces an almost perfect match at the corner juncture, and thereby yields an aesthetically pleasing continuous border structure around a room. Coping a piece of molding has traditionally required using a coping saw which is specially formed for the task of coping. A conventional coping saw is a hand saw with a very narrow blade that is held under tension in a shaped frame and is used for cutting curves in wood.
However, coping with such a traditional coping saw is a relatively slow, arduous, and labor intensive task. The manual sawing takes place with the blade generally at an angle. Furthermore, the saw blade must be guided around various curves, notches and protrusions. To cope, the operator saws back and forth being careful to maintain and follow the proper molding curves necessary to make the two corner pieces of molding match. Depending on the particular corner piece to be coped, the operator will either perform the coping process in a single step, such as for molding having a smooth and rounded contour, or in for more complicated shaped molding, as for molding having sharper angles and curved contours such as shown in FIG. 1, a two step process is used.
While it takes only seconds to miter a piece of molding with available miter boxes, depending upon the size of the molding, for molding requiring a coping cut it takes approximately one minute to as long as ten minutes to cope the molding piece with a traditional coping saw. To further frustrate the coping process, homeowners are requesting the use of more and more hardwoods for their molding, thus making coping an even more difficult, physical and time-consuming job. As may be appreciated, the increased time spent coping a piece of wood decreases the production of the woodworker not only by making the molding installation process time longer, but also by physically tiring the woodworker such that his work is slowed down by simple exhaustion.
There have been attempts in the prior art to ease the task and speed up the time necessary for coping a piece of molding. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,949,464 to Adomatis discloses an electrically operating coping saw. Such coping saws typically utilize a motor to drive a blade which reciprocates back and forth in a sawing motion. However, while such a design might seemingly reduce the continuous physical sawing motion normally required to cut with a coping saw, such coping saws are not very useful from a practical standpoint. Coping is a very precise and tedious operation often requiring small, precise cuts around the various curves and protrusions of a piece of molding. Such saws having reciprocating back and forth sawing motion have a tendency to shake and jerk as they cut. This shaking tends to make precision cutting difficult and throws the blade out of line with the precise curves, which must be followed to accurately cope a piece of molding. Furthermore, such saws are often difficult to even start on a piece of molding because of the shaking and jerking motion of the moving blade. As may be appreciated, starting the path of a coping saw into the correct curve line is a critical part of proper coping.
Other hand-held or portable powered sawing mechanisms are also known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 1,955,063 to Greitzer discloses such a portable power saw. However, such saws are generally designed to accomplish very gross, straight cuts such as ripsaw work, crosscut work, metal cutting and the severing of bones in meat cutting. Because of the rigorous cutting action of such saws, the blade cannot be guided gently and precisely over a piece of molding as required for performing a coping cut.
The structures and frames of the other various prior art saws are also designed to make straight cuts on large pieces of wood as opposed to the delicate curved cuts involved with coping. For example, the saw disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,621,894 to Niksich has a rigorous cutting action and requires two hands to operate and does not leave a hand free to hold and guide a piece of molding. Similarly, the saws disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,584,630 to Meighan; U.S. Pat. No. 2,604,910 to Crosby; U.S. Pat. No. 2,690,774 to Hoard; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,413,414 to Strzalka all require two hands to properly operate and manipulate the saw. When making straight cuts in large bulk pieces of wood for which these saws are designed, the pieces of wood are often held by a clamp or are propped up between two sawhorses and thus do not require the operator to hold the wood while sawing. However, such saws require the operator to clamp the molding and making very precise cuts around the various curves of the molding to cope the piece is difficult.
Other saws have been developed for coping and include a continuous blade that travels around a pair of pulleys. While such coping saws allow more precise cuts they are difficult to operate in more than one orientation. Thus, for many coping operations requiring the user to operate the saw in more than one orientation, the saw is difficult to use and often results in cutting errors.
Consequently, there is a need for a coping saw which does not require the slow and tiresome physical sawing procedure of a traditional manual coping saw. There is further a need for a coping saw which can quickly and easily make precise cuts around any curves, notches and protrusions which are found on a piece of molding, and which is easy to start in a first operating orientation to properly make a first cut in a piece of molding and thereafter operate in a second operating orientation to easily and precisely manipulated around the various molding curves to perform a second coping cut.